Health and working life | Lucas helps Ingrid:

Many elderly people have difficulty taking advantage of the many capabilities that a mobile phone offers. The youth company UB Tekit helped them solve this problem.

In one of the meeting rooms at the Sama Activity Center, nine mature retirees, each with their own smartphone, sit and watch on a large screen, while Lukas Stefanowicz tells the story and shows a screenshot of his own phone. It talks about the many possibilities of Messenger.

The rest of the youth staff UB Tekit, Graine Raydhel Reyes, Torbjørn Mikal Skipevåg and Marcus Simonsen continue from the sidelines.

Retiree Ingrid Borkner Hansen smiles, fully engaged, as she tries this out on her mobile phone. She wants to know more about this.

– I think I can only do so little, so I want to participate in this. Everything I know I taught myself. I have grandchildren who show me something, but it goes by so fast. Some I remember and some I don't. “I just want to learn more,” she says.

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Experience from grandparents

UB Tekit has been offering training courses for seniors since last fall. The business idea is courses and training for elderly people who suffer from mobile phones.

-We have some experience from our grandparents, because they often ask us if we can do this and that. “We are now training them to manage this themselves,” says Marcus.

It's something Rol Johansson is aware of.

Yes, they sit on the phone and say: Father, look here, you are only doing this and that. So I have to try to keep up.

The boys say the elderly are receiving training on basic phone functions. It's about sending messages, downloading apps and deleting them.

– Then we teach them how to cheat, store passwords, and so on.

For participants, the courses are completely free.

– The municipality is the one that pays. It'll save us a few kroner, the boys say.

One of the company's guides, Kjell Corneliussen, president of the Harstad branch of the National Association for the Hard of Hearing, helps bring the information to a level that seniors can understand. He believes that the courses are very important to bridge the gap between people over 70 years of age and young people.

– There's not much you can do without access to digital assistants. Be it travel, payments or health. Then the mobile phone is the essential tool. If you're good at using a mobile phone, you're also good at other things.

The only challenge Kjell Corneliussen can see is that the guys at UB Tekit can sometimes be a bit quick.

– That's why I intervene and moderate a little, because there is a lot going on in the minds of the participants. He says it should be learned slowly and repeated often.